[iMSystem]

Earlier today Blizzard posted on their blog upcoming updates to Diablo 3 in the forthcoming patch, here are the key details:

Bridging the Inferno Item Gap

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Right now, we are all quite aware that farming Act 1 Inferno won't get you geared for Act 2, your going to have to spend more time in the AH right? Blizzard knows this and are wanting to change this around.

"The first is players who find an Act too difficult feel compelled to use the auction house in order to progress"

Blizzard are planning to change the way item drops work in Inferno to increase the change for more higher quality items to drop.

New drop rates for 1.0.3

Item	Hell Act III and IV	Inferno Act I	Inferno Act II	Inferno Act III/IV
iLvl 61	9 %	18%	19%	24%
iLvl 62	2%	3%	12%	16%
iLvl 63	0%	2%	4%	8%

"As you can see, players who would rather murder monsters 4x as fast in Inferno Act I can do so knowing they have a chance at amazing items, and players who want a challenge can kill in Acts III and IV in Inferno and be rewarded with a higher drop rate."

You Keep Using That Word

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Blizzard are still working on legendary items, and won't be changed in 1.0.3, but we know they are working on it.

"When we’re done, high level Legendaries should be flat out better than blue items, they’ll carry a good amount of power with them, and they should also be distinctive or memorable in the benefits they provide.

The Nephalem Difference

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Changes to the Valor stack that we all know and love are in the works for the upcoming patch. Blizzard feels like we are just getting enough stacks to kill a boss, and then rinse and repeat (Warden / Butcher runs anyone?) So to compete that, Blizzard are planning to change the way guaranteed loot drops work on bosses, in exchange for more drops on Elites and Champions.

"To help hit that goal we’re lowering the number of guaranteed Rare items on bosses when you have your full five stacks of Nephalem Valor from two guaranteed Rares to one guaranteed Rare (you still have a very good chance at multiple rares, it's just no longer guaranteed). In exchange, all champion and rare packs will now drop a bonus guaranteed Rare item when you have your full five stacks of Nephalem Valor. The change benefits players with more overall drops, and a reason to push to continue progressing."

You Into the Group Thing?

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Well, say good bye to harder mobs when you decide to play with your friends:

"We’re removing the bonus monster damage per additional player in a coop game."

This change may come to a surprise for some of you, but it is a welcome sight in the realms of Inferno. There has been quite a few posts and suggestions to Blizzard saying that when you want to play with your friends, the game just doesn't become fun (Isn't that why we play with friends in the first place?) So in return, Blizzard will remove the buff to monsters when you have 2 or more players in your party.

Oh Yeah!

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So, you've cleared Act 1, figuring you have a pretty decent set of gear you go attempt Act 2 where you get one-shot by those stupid stingers who shoot the tiny bug things, and those spastic leaper cats that throw bombs and run at you? Well fear no more! Blizzard, along with perhaps every other player, have realized that the difficulty gap between Act 1 and Act 2 is a massive leap, and are going to change this in 1.0.3.

"In patch 1.0.3 we’re going to be lowering that wall by adjusting the damage and health of monsters in Inferno Act II, III and IV. We feel like Act I Inferno is in a pretty good place.

Act 3 and Act 4 will remain unchanged and Blizzard has a good quote on the reason why:

"Our design goal with Acts II, III and IV is to keep them challenging, but smooth the difficulty ramp out a bit. If a monk or barbarian is geared well enough that they can use a heavily offensive build and murder everything in Act I, they should be able to swap to a more defensive build and do okay in Act II. As they gear up they can begin adjusting back to becoming offensive in Act II, at which point they can jump into Act III with a focus on defense, and so on. Difficulty certainly ties into itemization, encounter and enemy tuning, and class balance, and all of these things together are going to paint a more reasonable difficulty curve as you hit Inferno in 1.0.3."

Paying for Your Mistakes

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Ever to those mad corpse runs, finally flipping some tables and saying "Stuff it!" to elites and champion packs? Well now, you might have to watch your bank.

"... we evaluated a number of new death mechanics, such as just allowing the resurrection timer to increase even higher, disallowing resurrection during boss fights, or putting a debuff on you when you resurrect (such as reduced combat effectiveness)."

Various ideas and mechanics were thrown around until Blizzard decided to go with something more simple and close to home, the Repair Cost.

"We’re currently evaluating repair costs between 4x and 6x their current values."

Whoa, Whoa, Nice Shootin’ Tex

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Attack speed's associated bugs will be fixed in the upcoming patch. (Crazerk, this might relate to your DPS loss bug :P) as well as lowering the overall effectiveness of the stat.

"There are two different solutions we’re considering to reduce the effectiveness of Increased Attack Speed. The first is to simply reduce the value on all the items to their desired values. In general our desire is to never change items as that makes them feel less concrete, but the upside is you would still be able to look at an item and know exactly what you are getting. The other approach is to change the formula used for attack speed aggregation so that stacking attack speed from multiple slots suffers from diminishing returns. The downside of that approach is that it introduces yet another hidden modifier on an item property (and many people dislike hidden modifiers), and complicates the already difficult decision of item gearing."

Just Three Two Easy Payments

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Here is the changed in prices for the Gem crafting update in 1.0.3:

Gem Quality	Previous Cost	New Cost
Flawed	3 Chipped + 500 gold	2 Chipped + 10 gold
Normal	3 Flawed + 750 gold	2 Flawed + 25 gold
Flawless	3 Normal + 1250 gold	2 Normal + 40 gold
Perfect	3 Flawless + 2000 gold + 1 Page	2 Flawless + 55 gold + 1 Page
Radiant	3 Perfect + 3500 gold + 2 Pages	2 Perfect + 70 gold + 2 Pages
Square	3 Radiant + 7500 gold + 1 Tome	2 Radiant + 85 gold + 1 Tome
Flawless Square	3 Square + 20,000 gold + 2 Tomes	2 square + 100 gold + 2 Tomes

"The gem combine costs for Perfect Square and above will remain unchanged."

Nerf Them, Buff Me

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"Class tuning is not a major focus for 1.0.3. There will be a small number of skills changes, but for the most part we want people to continue experimenting and enjoy their skills for a while. Our goal was and continues to be build diversity, and though we see quite a bit of build diversity, we think we can do much better. Class tuning will be an ongoing process, and we’re targeting the 1.1 patch for most class tweaks, with a focus on punching build diversity up a few more notches."

But What About…

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"While these are a few of the larger systems adjustments we’re making, the 1.0.3 patch will include many fixes, quality of life enhancements, Auction House improvements, and other changes. We hope you look forward to the patch as much as we do getting it out there, and again we appreciate your continued feedback. See you in-game!"

Reddit's AMA

Today on Reddit the Senior game designers for Blizzard did a AMA. Here are the points covered:

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General

• There could be an "auto-skip cinematics" options added in the future.
• There will likely be an "invisibility mode" for the friend list in a future patch.
• Blizzard are looking into adding an option that will filter out white items on the ground.
• There will be more ingame hints added that point to the existence of Elective Mode.
• Players have discovered all zones in the game.
• Custom chat channels are in the works.

Items

• The color of Health Potions, Gems, Tomes and Pages will change in a future patch.
• When Legendaries get an upgrade in a future patch they'll have many interesting proc abilities.
• There is no elemental damage because players would just use the one that has the highest DPS. The only elemental damage type that survived is Cold - it has lowered damage but chills enemies. It's also the least used damage type.
• There are currently restrictions that don't let you dye Legendary items. Blizzard are looking into the Tech issue of solving that.
• The Staff of Herding and all components required to craft it will be made to stand out WAY more in the inventory in 1.0.3.
• The stat for increasing the potency of Health Globes might also affect Potions as well in the future.
• Life Steal and Life on Hit
• Life on Hit is roughly 3 times stronger than Life Steal but doesn't scale as well. Life Steal is tuned for DPS that players would hit months after release.
• Life Steal is made to, someday, make you feel like you're breaking the game.
• If in a few months Life Steal is still not used enough it'll receive changes.
• Life Steal is also tuned for multiple targets taken into account.

Difficulty

• Whimsyshire will also be affected by the incoming difficulty changes in 1.0.3. For Hell Whimsyshire counts as Act IV and for Inferno as Act III/IV.
• In a future patch bosses will give better loot the first time you kill them in a higher difficulty (not going to be in 1.0.3).
• Crafting
• The Blacksmith crafting will have its prices decreased in 1.0.3.
• Blizzard like the idea of adding gems into the Blacksmith's crafts in the future.
• Crafting is not meant to have better items than monster drops or AH. It's just another gold outlet. With the price reduction in 1.0.3 though things should get "a little more interesting".
• Blacksmith and Jeweler recipes drop only in Inferno. As people get more into that difficulty and Blizzard get more results to monitor they might considere increasing their drop rates.
• Monsters
• In a future patch Shielding enemies will cast their shields less frequently.
• In a future patch rares with Invulnerable Minions will have their health decreased.
• Some fleeing monsters will flee less in 1.0.3 so that enrage timers don't become a big issue for players.

Auction House

• Blizzard are considering adding the RMAH to Hardcore mode.
• Commodities have been down because of flawed design. It made players spam the Search button.
• You will be able to cancel auctions in patch 1.0.3 (99% sure).
• There are currently no plans to let players choose how long they're putting items up for.
• The Auction House has no effect on drop rates. They are actually tuned for players that will never use the Auction House.
• The game was tuned without the Auction House because there weren't enough players to make it work during internal testing.
• Item comparison in the Auction House window will be added in the future.

Classes

• Class sigils from the pre-release promotional site should start showing up in the next couple weeks.
• Some Demon Hunter abilities will be buffed to promote build diversity (not in 1.0.3).
• The least used skills at level 60 are Energy Twister, Exploding Palm, Sacrifice, Ancient Spear and Strafe.

Magic Find

• Magic Find works exactly the same way as it did in Diablo II.

PvP

• There will only be Arena in the PvP patch.
• There might be dueling at some point in the future.

Hardcore

• 4.1% of characters are Hardcore.
• Every design decision takes Hardcore into account.
• Hardcore Characters Class Breakdown:
• Level 46-50: Barbarian: 25.86% * Monk: 23.90% * Demon Hunter: 18.47% * Wizard: 16.96% * Witch Doctor: 14.81%
• Level 60: Barbarian: 22.67% * Monk: 21.83% * Demon Hunter: 21.04% * Wizard: 19.23% * Witch Doctor: 15.23%

That about does it, who else is looking forward to these changes? I personally am quite satisfied as I will be able to complete Act 2 on my Monk! ^^

Sources:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262...eview-6_6_2012 || http://www.diablofans.com/news/1236-...lert-linkedin/

Quick Comments

	nirvAnA:
	TCPLemminks:
	Nemo:	Thanks

[Dox]

omgad casuals ruining teh gaem!111111111!1

[kookielah]

the little bit of inferno I have done has been slightly frustrating but thats because I'm a completionist and I must kill every champion mob :P so yeah its my own fault

[mGGDaedalus]

Looks like they're addressing a large number of the biggest complaints with this game so far, which is good news